In a display of mendacity worthy of the days when the late Senator Joseph McCarthy stifled free speech from coast to coast, the United States Department of State has denied a visa to Afghanistan's most internationally recognized activist, Malalai Joya.

Elected to Afghanistan's national assembly in 2005, when she was 27, Joya has been a lonely voice campaigning for women's rights in her country. Joya has been threatened with rape and subject to assaults, and has survived numerous assassination attempts. She is a fierce opponent of the corrupt Karzai regime and believes that American military intervention is about geopolitics, not humanitarianism.

Despite previous successful visits to the United States, Joya's visa application — to promote her just-published book, A Woman Among Warlords — was rejected by the US embassy in Kabul. The reason is Kafka-esque: Joya was found to be "unemployed," with no fixed address, living "underground."

While not yet a household name in America, Joya enjoys a reputation for immense moral authority and is frequently mentioned as potential recipient of a Nobel Peace Prize.

Named last year by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world, Joya has learned to live with the constant threat of death by nightly changing where she sleeps.

The State Department's suggestion that she is an unemployed layabout is obscene.

The perversity of all this is that Joya is an exemplar of the sort of democracy that embodies women's rights. Apologists on the left and the right cite women's struggle for dignity when they seek to justify America's 10-year-old-and-still-going-nowhere intervention.

Of women in Afghanistan, Joya writes: "We remain caged in our country, without access to justice and still ruled by women-hating criminals. Fundamentalists still preach that 'a woman should be in her house or in the grave.' In most places, it is still not safe for a woman to appear in public uncovered, or to walk on the street without a male relative. Girls are sold into marriage. Rape goes unpunished."

Is this message too dangerous for Americans to hear?

We call upon Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to personally intervene and order that Joya be granted an immediate visa.

OBAMA'S WAR

Did a flash of agonizing reappraisal wash over President Barack Obama when George W. Bush's former henchman, Karl Rove, endorsed American military action in Libya?

Did Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the champion of the no-fly zone, pause and reflect?

What about Senator John Kerry? Kerry has a history of supporting military engagements he later comes to regret.

And Samantha Power, the Harvard political thinker who called Clinton a "monster" when she campaigned for Obama? Now on the staff of the National Security Council, Power endorsed Clinton's advice to intervene.

War mixes things up, that is for sure.

As of the moment, the situation in Libya is — to say the least — cloudy.

British Prime Minister David Cameron, an early fan of the no-fly gambit, is sending signals that the mission — whatever it was, or is — could be near completion, at least as far as Cameron is concerned.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who has in the past pressured Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi to account for human-rights violations, wants France to, as Bush might have put it, stay the course.

Women on the verge At next week’s Democratic National Convention in Denver, Hillary Clinton’s delegates will get just about everything they’ve wanted — aside from the nomination of their candidate, of course.

Obamastrology Another Leo president. That's what we're getting with Barack Obama, and it's even good news on an astrological level.

Robert McNamara, RIP As secretary of defense under President Lyndon B. Johnson, Robert McNamara prosecuted the Vietnam War on a day-to-day basis, just as Donald Rumsfeld orchestrated the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for George W. Bush.

Capuano for Senate After a telescoped campaign, Massachusetts Democrats go to the polls Tuesday to choose a successor to a legend, Ted Kennedy.

Afghanistan: The war that's killing us For several years now, I've been reading Andrew Bacevich's articles and books that argue for a reimagination of how American government conceives of and executes foreign policy.

A Statesman Too Late? The congressional debt "super committee" has begun its work, and already there are signs that its task is hopeless.

Senate shuffle Don’t count Ted Kennedy out just yet, but the prognosis immediately set minds thinking about the inevitable departure of Kennedy from the US Senate, where he has served since 1962.

The ‘A’ word How can the media cover a subject that nearly everyone’s thinking about, but is almost too abhorrent to discuss?

Bull disclosure As the presidential candidates prep for the final debate of 2008 — which will take place on October 15 in Hempstead, New York, with CBS’s Bob Schieffer moderating — it’s a fitting time to ask: why do some journalistic conflicts of interest become semi-scandals, while others get almost no attention at all?

MERCY AND SAL DIMASI | March 13, 2013 When it comes to showing a modicum of mercy to some of those convicted of federal crimes, Barack Obama is shaping up to have the worst track record of any president in recent memory.

NEXT, MARRIAGE EQUALITY | March 05, 2013 On March 27 and 28, the US Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments in two cases that could essentially put America on the road to full marriage equality.

THUS SPAKE MARKEY | February 26, 2013 Last week, Congressman Ed Markey inadvertently injected some daring political thinking and a touch of historical imagination into the race to fill the US Senate seat vacated by John Kerry's appointment as secretary of state.

DRONES: 10 THOUGHTS | February 20, 2013 Foreign drone attacks are almost (but not quite yet) as American as apple pie.